scholarly journals The population dynamics of a bacterial pathogen after host re-infection affects the founding population size

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaofei Jiang ◽  
Rémi Peyraud ◽  
Philippe Remigi ◽  
Alice Guidot ◽  
Richard Berthomé ◽  
...  

AbstractIn natura, many organisms face multiple infections by pathogens. The ability of a pathogen to reinfect an already-infected host affects the genetic makeup of the pathogen population at the end of the infectious cycle. Despite the likely prevalence of this situation, the population dynamics of pathogens during multiple infections over time is still poorly understood. Here we combined theoretical and empirical investigations of the founding population size, a critical driver of the evolution of pathogens, in a setting allowing for multiple and subsequent re-infections. Using the soil-borne bacterial pathogen Ralstonia solanacearum and tomato as its host, we first assessed the strength of the host infection bottleneck, and showed that both the host barrier and the immune system work additively to constrain the infection. Then, by increasing the temperature, we experimentally demonstrated that the increased pathogen proliferation within the host reduces the contribution of subsequent re-infection leading to a lower founding population size. Our study highlights the importance of within-host pathogen proliferation in determining founding population size – and thus bacterial genetic diversity during epidemics – for pathosystems where multiple re-infections occur. Under current global changes, our work notably predicts that an increased temperature provided this increase has a beneficial impact on pathogen growth, should decrease the founding population size and as a consequence potentially lower the diversity of the infecting and transmitted pathogen population.Significance StatementFounder population size is a major determinant of pathogen evolution, yet we still have limited insights into effective populations in natural settings. Most studies have considered infection as a single event, followed by pathogen growth in the host. But, in natura, organisms typically face multiple infections by several co-exisiting pathogen strains. Therefore, effective population size will depend on the timing and relative growth rate of the different infecting strains. In this work, we predict and experimentally show that both priority effects and within-host competition determines effective founding size, with an over-contribution of fast-growing and early infecting genotypes. This work sheds a new light on the ecological and evolutionary pressures affecting infection dynamics in realistic conditions.

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sankar Subramanian

Abstract Objective Domestication of wild animals results in a reduction in the effective population size, and this could affect the deleterious mutation load of domesticated breeds. Furthermore, artificial selection will also contribute to the accumulation of deleterious mutations due to the increased rate of inbreeding among these animals. The process of domestication, founder population size, and artificial selection differ between cattle breeds, which could lead to a variation in their deleterious mutation loads. We investigated this using mitochondrial genome data from 364 animals belonging to 18 cattle breeds of the world. Results Our analysis revealed more than a fivefold difference in the deleterious mutation load among cattle breeds. We also observed a negative correlation between the breed age and the proportion of deleterious amino acid-changing polymorphisms. This suggests a proportionally higher deleterious SNPs in young breeds compared to older breeds. Our results highlight the magnitude of difference in the deleterious mutations present in the mitochondrial genomes of various breeds. The results of this study could be useful in predicting the rate of incidence of genetic diseases in different breeds.


2008 ◽  
Vol 89 (6) ◽  
pp. 1467-1477 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. N. V. Vijay ◽  
Vasantika ◽  
Rahul Ajmani ◽  
Alan S. Perelson ◽  
Narendra M. Dixit

Recombination can facilitate the accumulation of mutations and accelerate the emergence of resistance to current antiretroviral therapies for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. Yet, since recombination can also dissociate favourable combinations of mutations, the benefit of recombination to HIV remains in question. The confounding effects of mutation, multiple infections of cells, random genetic drift and fitness selection that underlie HIV evolution render the influence of recombination difficult to unravel. We developed computer simulations that mimic the genomic diversification of HIV within an infected individual and elucidate the influence of recombination. We find, interestingly, that when the effective population size of HIV is small, recombination increases both the diversity and the mean fitness of the viral population. When the effective population size is large, recombination increases viral fitness but decreases diversity. In effect, recombination enhances (lowers) the likelihood of the existence of multi-drug resistant strains of HIV in infected individuals prior to the onset of therapy when the effective population size is small (large). Our simulations are consistent with several recent experimental observations, including the evolution of HIV diversity and divergence in vivo. The intriguing dependencies on the effective population size appear due to the subtle interplay of drift, selection and epistasis, which we discuss in the light of modern population genetics theories. Current estimates of the effective population size of HIV have large discrepancies. Our simulations present an avenue for accurate determination of the effective population size of HIV in vivo and facilitate establishment of the benefit of recombination to HIV.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sankar Subramanian

Abstract ObjectiveDomestication of wild animals results in a reduction in the effective population size and this could affect the deleterious mutation load of domesticated breeds. Furthermore, artificial selection will also contribute to accumulation deleterious mutations due to the increased rate of inbreeding among these animals. The process of domestication, founder population size, and artificial selection differ between cattle breeds, which could lead to a variation in their deleterious mutation loads. We investigated this using mitochondrial genome data from 252 animals belonging to 15 cattle breeds of the world. ResultsOur analysis revealed more than fivefold difference in the deleterious mutation load among cattle breeds. We also observed a negative correlation between the neutral heterozygosity and the ratio of amino acid changing diversity to silent diversity. This suggests a proportionally higher amino acid changing variants in breeds with low diversity. Our results highlight the magnitude of difference in the deleterious mutations present in the mitochondrial genomes of various breeds. The results of this study could be useful in predicting the rate of incidence of genetic diseases in different breeds.


Author(s):  
Kateryna V. Kratzer ◽  
Annemarie van der Marel ◽  
Colin Garroway ◽  
Marta López-Darias ◽  
Stephen D. Petersen ◽  
...  

AbstractThe adaptive potential of invasive species is thought to decrease during founding events due to reduced genetic diversity, limiting the new population’s ability to colonize novel habitats. Barbary ground squirrels (Atlantoxerus getulus) were purportedly introduced as a single breeding pair to the island of Fuerteventura but have expanded to over a million individuals spread across the island in just over 50 years. We estimated the number of founders and measured the level of genetic diversity in this population using the mitochondrial displacement loop and microsatellite markers. Island samples (n = 19) showed no variation in the d-loop, suggesting a single founding female, while Moroccan samples (n = 6) each had unique mitochondrial haplotypes. The microsatellite data of the island population (n = 256 individuals) revealed a small effective population size, low levels of heterozygosity, and high levels of inbreeding, supporting a founding population size of two to three individuals. Our results suggest that A. getulus has undergone an intense genetic bottleneck during their colonization of the island. They are one of the few species where introduction effort does not explain invasion success, although further investigation may explain how they have avoided the worst expected effects following an extreme genetic bottleneck.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karthik Hullahalli ◽  
Justin R. Pritchard ◽  
Matthew K. Waldor

AbstractPathogen population dynamics during infection are critical determinants of infection susceptibility and define patterns of dissemination. However, deciphering pathogen population dynamics, particularly founding population sizes in host organs and patterns of dissemination between organs, is difficult due to the fact that measuring bacterial burden alone is insufficient to observe these patterns. Introduction of allelic diversity into otherwise identical bacteria using DNA barcodes enables sequencing-based measurements of these parameters, in a method known as STAMP (Sequence Tag-Based analysis of Microbial Population dynamics). However, bacteria often undergo unequal expansion within host organs, resulting in marked differences in the frequencies of barcodes in input and output libraries. Here, we show that these differences confound STAMP-based analyses of founding population sizes and dissemination patterns. We present STAMPR, a successor to STAMP that accounts for such population expansions. Using data from systemic infection of barcoded Extraintestinal Pathogenic E. coli we show that this new framework along with the metrics it yields enhances the fidelity of measurements of bottlenecks and dissemination patterns. STAMPR was also validated on an independent, barcoded Pseudomonas aeruginosa dataset, uncovering new patterns of dissemination within the data. This framework (available at https://github.com/hullahalli/stampr_rtisan), when coupled with barcoded datasets, enables a more complete assessment of within-host bacterial population dynamics.ImportanceBarcoded bacteria are often employed to monitor pathogen population dynamics during infection. The accuracy of these measurements is diminished by unequal bacterial expansion rates. Here, we develop computational tools to circumvent this limitation and establish additional metrics that collectively enhance the fidelity of measuring within-host pathogen founding population sizes and dissemination patterns. These new tools will benefit future studies of the dynamics of pathogens and symbionts within their respective hosts, and may have additional barcode-based applications beyond host-microbe interactions.


Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 1416
Author(s):  
Karolína Machová ◽  
Anita Kranjčevičová ◽  
Luboš Vostrý ◽  
Emil Krupa

Loss off genetic diversity negatively affects most of the modern dog breeds. However, no breed created strictly for laboratory purposes has been analyzed so far. In this paper, we sought to explore by pedigree analysis exactly such a breed—the Czech Spotted Dog (CSD). The pedigree contained a total of 2010 individuals registered since the second half of the 20th century. Parameters such as the mean average relatedness, coefficient of inbreeding, effective population size, effective number of founders, ancestors and founder genomes and loss of genetic diversity—which was calculated based on the reference population and pedigree completeness—were used to assess genetic variability. Compared to the founding population, the reference population lost 38.2% of its genetic diversity, of which 26% is due to random genetic drift and 12.2% is due to the uneven contribution of the founders. The reference population is highly inbred and related. The average inbreeding coefficient is 36.45%, and the mean average relatedness is 74.83%. The effective population size calculated based on the increase of inbreeding coefficient is 10.28. Thus, the Czech Spotted Dog suffered significant losses of genetic diversity that threaten its future existence.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Ponciano

AbstractUsing a nonparametric Bayesian approach Palacios and Minin [1] dramatically improved the accuracy, precision of Bayesian inference of population size trajectories from gene genealogies. These authors proposed an extension of a Gaussian Process (GP) nonparametric inferential method for the intensity function of non-homogeneous Poisson processes. They found that not only the statistical properties of the estimators were improved with their method, but also, that key aspects of the demographic histories were recovered. The authors’ work represents the first Bayesian nonparametric solution to this inferential problem because they specify a convenient prior belief without a particular functional form on the population trajectory. Their approach works so well and provides such a profound understanding of the biological process, that the question arises as to how truly “biology-free” their approach really is. Using well-known concepts of stochastic population dynamics, here I demonstrate that in fact, Palacios and Minin’s GP model can be cast as a parametric population growth model with density dependence and environmental stochasticity. Making this link between population genetics and stochastic population dynamics modeling provides novel insights into eliciting biologically meaningful priors for the trajectory of the effective population size. The results presented here also bring novel understanding of GP as models for the evolution of a trait. Thus, the ecological principles foundation of Palacios and Minin [1]’s prior adds to the conceptual and scientific value of these authors’inferential approach. I conclude this note by listing a series of insights brought about by this connection with Ecology.


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